Living through the Barack Obama, and the Bernie Sanders campaigns of 2008 and 2016, respectively, have given me a strange sense of what politics are like. Now, I’m only twenty eight years old and my experience is skewed due to that, however, it feels as though those two years were particularly focused on policies that made elections feel worth something. During the 2020 campaign, Donald Trump’s campaign was mostly focused on continuing to build the wall, villainize China, and to manage (not sure this is the right word) the coronovirus 19 pandemic. Joe Biden’s promises were more substantive and he has actually kept or is working toward completing half of those promises This leads me to today, this week Donald Trump had an apparent assassination attempt on his life and both sides are already creating conspiracies as to what may have happened.
This has made me begin to think about the politics of spectacle and the impact it might have as we head into the deep trenches of the 2024 election. My concern is that a fascist is turning into a martyr by his followers and that the media will help paint this portrait. Meanwhile, the same media is portraying one of the most effective presidents of my lifetime as a doddering old man.
The politics of spectacle is what allows a rapist, 34-time convicted felon, and insurrectionist to have even the potential of appealing to the American people as a martyr. Meanwhile, the most effective policy-pushing president in my lifetime is seen as unfit to run. I do personally believe he should relinquish the candidacy for the Democratic party to his vice president, Kamala Harris, however, that doesn’t change his many accomplishments:
- Attempting to ban LNG permits
- Attempting to implement student debt relief
- Onshoring jobs
- Effectively balancing labor vs. capital
- Effective antitrust
All this to be said, we’re now in a political context where sitting members of the US congress are engaging in the encouragement of political violence that they are also demanding be brushed aside for unity. This is amplified by the real-time engagement we can have on social media and the conspiracies will only increase given the profit thats generated from those clicks.
Given that there we’re still in the nascent phases of this current development, I felt compelled to write down the thoughts going through my head. The ability for the American political economy to produce the conditions we’re currently experiencing are a conglomeration of contradictions that are next to impossible to anticipate. However, it is still unnerving to live through it. I’ve decided to put down any social media for a little as all of this develops but I also can’t help but compare out times to Italy under the Fascismo party or the Weimar Republic but describing the parallels would be a far longer post than this.
I was speaking with my wife earlier today and I can’t help but resent the person who said:
May you live in interesting times.
While the ’90s had its own problems, I can’t help but think it would be nicer to have transitioned from young adulthood to adulthood during that period. While I can’t tell the future, I fear this will only get worse from here until we have meaningful changes to our political economy.